Clearly my soul is nonexistent and my heart is truly black as pitch, because I've never been crazy about "God Bless America." It's smaltzy as hell and I'm always like, "Y'know given the wealth and influence America has, maybe we should ask God to bless other nations. I mean, you don't give the blue spiny shell to the guy in first place." Then again, given that the developed world has us beat on everything except imprisoning people and our bloated military budget, maybe the song is more apropos then I think. Though I don't know...

The best thing to come out of this song was Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land. He wrote that song as a Take That against "God Bless America" with the chorus originally being "God blessed America for me" rather than "This Land was made for you and me."

Woody Guthrie's song has been out long enough that it can be safely glurgified, especially if you take out this verse:

I don't find God Bless America particularly schmaltzy or offensive or stirring or anything, really; it was merely part of the standard background sound of my childhood. However, nowadays when I hear it, all I can think of is the ending of Once Upon A Time In America.